Just a few days after the famous debate on fairness in Bollywood industry fizzled out, another fairness row has taken birth. Racism has taken roots so deep in our society that we fail to notice that few things around us are ‘Outrageously Racist’.
Likewise, this popular selfie app ‘FaceApp’ didn’t think once before introducing this ‘HOT’ filter that actually lightens your skin tone. FaceApp is the trending new selfie app that makes you look ‘younger’, ‘slimmer’ and ‘hotter’. But what’s the definition of looking ‘hotter’ as per the app?
According to the makers of app, being hot is synonymous to being ‘Snow White’. People around the world, of different colour used the app and the results were undoubtedly ‘racist’. The furious users of the app are pouring their heart out on Twitter with breakneck remarks.
Apart from lightening the complexion, it also narrows the nose and smoothens out the imperfections on skin. Supposedly, the app can make even the darkest woman on the Earth look ‘Hotter’ with their brand new hot filter. Please mark that these are not our views about the true beauty. But complexion seems to be a criterion for looking hot, according to the app’s standards.
Mashable contacted the App’s founder to know his views about the filter. Here’s what he says:
"We are deeply sorry for this unquestionably serious issue," he said. "It is an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying neural network caused by the training set bias, not intended behavior. To mitigate the issue, we have renamed the effect to exclude any positive connotation associated with it."
Also Read: Abhay Deol on fairness cream row: FB post was provocative, to make people think
It raised an important question that society still considers fair skin to be beautiful. Fair and beautiful doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand. But people often mistake one for the other. Beauty sees no bounds of colour, shape, size, height or any other physical attributes.
We hope that we, being a responsible citizen of this world, try NOT TO confuse fairness with beauty. We all are beautiful. Period.
